Rebecca_CP#1

Conversation Partner Meeting #1 (15.01.19)

19:45-21:00

I met with Abdullah for the first time today. We decided to meet at Starbucks as it is very close to campus and halfway between where each of us live. He got stuck in traffic on the way over, and was a little late.

I learned that Abdullah studies civil engineering, but wants to change to mechanical engineering. He is studying to take the TOEFL, and asked me the differences between the TOEFL and the IELTS, so I told him; however, I also noted that I have never seen any sample IELTS questions before, so I couldn’t be very specific in how the questions are structured.

A large part of our conversation was spent on Tallahassee itself. Abdullah asked me what there was to do for fun in Tallahassee, and that the city seems rather boring. I agreed. It took a while for me to come up with anything particularly fun to do. There’s a museum; you can go zip lining; we have many hiking and biking trails. He did not seem supremely impressed about this, and asked what I do on the weekends if I don’t do these things. I told him that I study or practice trombone and that these seem to be my greatest past times. He was also concerned about my sleeping habits, which I was rather touched by (“Sleep more! You need to sleep more. Living like that is unhealthy!”)

At one point, a girl wearing pajamas sat at our table and asked if we had any cash. I immediately told her that I had none and that Abdullah had none, and she went on her way. It was very awkward, and I decided to tell the truth to Abdullah and say that things like that happen pretty often on the area of Tennessee Street closest to the school. He was very confused about it (“I’m not saying it’s good. It’s actually really annoying, but we get used to it. It’s not normal everywhere.”)